This story was originally published by the Nashville Banner. Sign up for their newsletter at nashvillebanner.com/newsletters.
A bill concerning undocumented public school students that has dominated Tennessee’s two-year legislative session passed on the House floor Monday, but its fate is unclear due to a conflicting Senate version of the bill.
House Bill 793 was originally introduced as a challenge to the Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision, which has allowed all K-12 students in the U.S. to attend public schools for free for decades. Senate Bill 836, sponsored by Sen. Bo Watson, R-North Chattanooga, passed the Senate in that form last spring, after an emotional committee process and floor vote.
But House Majority Leader William Lamberth, R-Portland, pumped the brakes on the House version he was sponsoring, concerned about the potential $1 billion in federal education funding that the bill could jeopardize.
This year, Lamberth amended his bill to fully strip all mentions of disenrollment, instead just requiring local school districts to track and report the aggregate number of students by documentation status. While immigration and education advocates still oppose Lamberth’s bill, raising questions about privacy, cost and the potential chilling effect it would have on immigrant families, the immediate impacts of the bill are watered down in the new House version.